Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman owes her career to Tiger Woods for accepting apology

Everything would have turned out a lot different for the Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman if Tiger Woods hadn’t taken it upon himself to try and make her “lynch” remarks go away.

Tilghman has to know that. She has to know that being a friend of Tiger’s, on the fringe of his inner circle, saved her from herself.

For Tiger’s done for Tilghman what he wouldn’t do for Fuzzy Zoeller - whose remarks, let’s face it, look at least slightly more tame now that Tilghman’s brought lynching into golf commentating.

“Tiger and Kelly are friends and Tiger has a great deal of respect for Kelly,” Tiger’s agent Mark Steinberg told ESPN just when the network was on the brink of turning Tilghman into a Ben Wright story. “Regardless of the choice of words used we know unequivocally that there was no ill-intent in her comments. This story is a non-issue in our eyes. Case closed.”

With that reprieve from golf’s high holy one himself, Tilghman gets to go on and learn from her mistake. It’s still hard to fathom how someone could bring lynching up with an African American and think it flies as a joke in the 21st century - and how no one else on air questioned it - but it’s on Tilghman now to improve.

Tiger’s given his friend that gift. And Tilghman needs to show he made the right choice by the way she conducts herself the rest of her career. She has to know this could have turned out a whole lot uglier than it has if Tiger hadn’t stepped in, that she’s lucky that Tiger likes her enough to use her as an emcee at some of his personal events and that relationship bailed her out when lynch came out.

Maybe Kelly Tilghman will go on to do great things in broadcasting now. She should start with another on-air apology this week that doesn’t include a “who may have been offended” or “if” qualifier. This particular point isn’t a Tilghman issue. It’s a standard sports apology issue. No one just comes right out and says they’re sorry anymore. Coaches and athletes always throw in an “if anyone was offended.”

Tilghman needs to drop any if or may have. Her words were offensive. Own up to that without qualifiers and make the most of this Tiger Woods’ second chance.

You hit the nail on the head. She owes her career to Tiger Woods! If it was not for Tiger breaking barriers in Golf she would not even have a job considering she is the first female golf announcer. SHe owes the man an apology as well as her career. Then we can all move on.

Can she make the same mistake again? A word of advice for her: Calm down, and say what you can handle. I watch her all the time and I can see that she is trying to say more, trying to be more professional. The right thing to do is be honest and be yourself. What really attracts people is the professionism that comes from the natural you.

BTuck, the number of sports broadcasters who have brought up a black man and lynching on air as a joke all but certainly stands at one in the last 20 years. Maybe longer. It's not your average offense.

People have the right to think she should be fired, just like you, I or Tiger have the right to think she should get to keep her job.

It's hard to downplay this one. But Tiger's view is going to speak loudest. Whether that's how it should be or not is debatable.

Kiel-I dont understand the fear or outright refusal for some in actually acknowledging that there are some things that cross decency? Forget 'politically correct', just pure human sense should tell you that a lynching is something you dont refer to offhand.

IMO, There cant be such a backlash to perceived over-sensitivity that people cant say hey, this is truly dumb or offensive.

I think the fact that for the next several years, when people turn on the TV and see her they immediately think "idiot", it is punishment enough.

For the record I don't believe Imus should have been fired either. Now, I don't think his job should have even existed in the first place, but to be fired for simply fulfilling his contract was wrong - and it was fitting to see he got even richer as a result.

huh--That's what I said. I agree that was truly dumb, I said it was unfortunate, and offensive for some people (myself included).
Some insensitive types were not offended; hence the use of "potentially" in the previous comment.

I think the overreaction is a bit silly. Surely her choice of words was quite unfortunate but anyone with a brain knows what she meant. We have seen this before when someone is too dominant in a sport. She was actually paying Tiger the highest compliment but the words were a very poor choice. The point is if the younger guys want to win then find a way to keep Tiger out of the Tournament. It was a JOKE (a poorly worded one) and we should move on. Tiger knows Kelly and knows that the words were not meant to be racist or mean.

Once again Tiger has shown the true gentleman that he is and should be an example to others no matter which race. Tiger has moved on and so should we.

Why is EVERYTHING always about Black people?? The Golf Channel article mentions that some 2000+ Blacks had been lynched in the US. WHY didn't they count the number of Whites and Hispanics who were hung (lynched, most often, without benefit of law or trial) for horse theft and murder in the West and Southwest during the post-Civil War era?

What she said was in JEST. It was definitely in POOR TASTE, and a suspension (or a fine) the correct response. Al Sharpton needs to sit down, shut up, and move on. MOST Americans are simply TIRED of him and the divisiveness he engenders.

There is what is right and there is reality. Reality is Kelly has had it. The Golf Channel and their sponsors just don't want this kind of controversy and the quickest way to end it is fire her. From a business point of view it just isn't worth the threatened boycotts and media attention which are sure to follow. Too bad Kelly.

Those Black folks demanding Kelly's demise as a commentator for her ill-conceived remark remind me of a recent dissertation by a Black woman that I saw on television.

This woman was decrying all the racism that still existed in White-dominated America.

She then waxed ecstatic about how ALL her ancestors had either perished in the mythical "middle passage" or had been systematically lynched or otherwise murdered by their White masters on the plantations.

She then went on to say that she was a third generation native of the city of Chicago and that her great-grandmother was still living at age ninety-six. Also that her family had a yearly reunion wher often upwards of one hundred people attended.

It is more troubling that Tilghman’s apology, which is a non-apology given her phraseology, “…if I had offended anyone…” Tilghman has worked on television long enough, old enough and educated enough to know that parsing an apology is simply avoiding to take responsibility for her choice of words. She is supposedly a friend of TW therefore makes the supposedly “funny moment” doubly insensitive and disrespectful because if that is how she treats her famous friend, imagine how she truly regards other people of color who are mere mortals. She got off easy with TW because he said it was a :non-issue”, but the fact is golf is a sport that has always had a stigma of a bunch of rich white men or women whose country clubs exclude just about everyone who is not them.

To this day, golf remains remarkably white within and without the PGA and related tours, with the sole exception of Tiger Woods is the dominant golfer who is also a dominant American person of color. When Tiger Woods won his first Masters, we all knew that he didn’t just win his first Major, he also won in all-white enclave, golf, PGA, and the Augusta Golf Club.

Shame on Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman for even parsing her feeble apology …

By the way, it is not about political correctness, but to respect the diversity within our society.

In your opinion, what would be the proper penalty for Kelly to pay for her deliberate and scurrilous insult to all "people of color?"

Should she be imprisoned indefinitely for committing an intentional "hate crime?"

Or would a sentence of house arrest and lifetime supervised probation be sufficient?

Her accuser, Al Sharpton, was sued and found liable for falsely and repeatedly accusing a Duchess county prosecutor of raping a teenage girl. He has never paid a cent of that judgment. What should be his punishment?

This is so overblown. All this hyperventilating is over the top in ultra-sensitivity.

I'm sure she regrets it. In retrospect, another word would have been better given the blowing hard and the PC world we live in.

Look at like this. I imagine that Kelly isn't even conscious of Tiger's race. I"m not. I look at him and see a fabulous golfer. I doubt it ever occurred to her...until it was too late....that there were racial issues in talking about his dominance of the sport.

It seems to me that it's all these looselugnut libs out there that look at Tiger and see black.

You're kidding, right?
Kelly's comments more inflammatory than Fuzzy's? References to "little boy" and "fried chicken" and "collard greens or whatever the hell they serve" are so much more blatant in referring to Tiger's background than a single word like lynch. Zoeller's comments were not a response to Faldo's descriptions of how competitors can top Tiger; Fuzzy's comments were unadulterated bigotry based on the stereotypes he knows, otherwise it would not have come out so freely.
Let's not reference the meaning of lynching as the offending point because it's interpretation is a point of contention. If you truly want to know that racism exists, Fuzzy's statements are without question the image of what's in his heart. He was political correctness turned off. There was no doubt.

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